Wapner Newman Under New Management

Philadelphia and Allentown, Pennsylvania, New Jersey

The Legal Intelligencer, April 21, 2009 
 

With the retirement of its remaining co-founder, Philadelphia personal injury firm Wapner, Newman, Wigrizer & Brecher has a new management structure.

Effective January 1st, managing partner Robert A. Newman retired from the firm he co-founded more than 30 years ago, and a new management team has replaced him.

The team consists of partners Marc G. Brecher, Steven G. Wigrizer and Robert S. Miller.

Brecher is the new managing partner.

Wigrizer said the new arrangement was a "natural evolution," since Newman frequently consulted with Wigrizer, Brecher and others when making business decisions.

"From my point of view, this management team made the most sense," Wigrizer said. "Marc is clearly the right choice for managing partner, and Rob Miller, who is 13 years my junior but who has a tremendous amount of experience in automobile and premises liability, brings a lot of energy and enthusiasm to the table as well as a lot of experience in his area of specialty."

Brecher, who has been with the firm since 1985, said he has no intention of deviating from the way Newman ran the firm.

"I really don't want to change things. When something if functioning pretty well, you want to continue the operation," he said, adding that the focus of the firm will continue to be personal injury litigation.

"The success of the practice has really been focusing on personal injury litigation, that's what the firm started out as," he said.

Wigrizer agreed.

"Our mission is to provide excellent legal services to our client base, and we have a system that works well so I can't think of any reason to change," he said.

According to Wigrizer, even the name will remain the same.

"I think the name gives people, initially, that [sense of] continuity and that comfort level so we have no plans to revise the name," he said.

That sense of continuity is one of Wapner Newman's most valuable assets, Wigrizer said.

"We have sons and daughters - we even have grandsons and granddaughters - who come to Wapner Newman, whose parents used Wapner Newman," he said.

The firm celebrated its 30th anniversary last year, and Newman turned 64 in February 2008, a milestone that he said "sort of caused me to start looking at things a little bit differently."

Firm co-founder Morton B. Wapner had retired at age 63 in the mid-1990s and it just seemed like it was time to move on to new endeavors, Newman said.

"I wasn't forced out," he said. "My partners, as a matter of fact, wanted me to stay."

Newman, who is now of counsel at the firm, said Brecher was an obvious choice for his successor.

"He's been there for 25 years or so, he's very organized, he's the kind of guy who's on top of things," he said. "I think everybody thought that."

Brecher said he worked closely with Newman over the past year to prepare for the transition.

"I had somewhat of an apprenticeship with Bob," he said.

Brecher said he does not intend to cut back on his practice to accommodate his new leadership duties.

"I intend to spend more and more time in the office to do what I have to do to manage the firm and continue my practice," he said.

Wigrizer said the firm is "strong and business is strong."

"It has been suggested that personal injury practice is counter-cyclical," he said. "The lion's share of cases we bring are cases that would be brought anyway - in any economic climate."

Brecher expressed a similar sentiment, saying that personal injury law firms are affected by fierce competition more than by economic factors and vowed that the firm is "going to keep a competitive edge."

One way the firm intends to keep that edge is through "an intense TV advertising campaign," he said.

Wapner Newman has advertised through television commercials for years, and Brecher said the firm's "name recognition is, in large part, because of TV."

"My job is to promote this firm and to keep this firm energized for decades to come, and we're all looking forward to our new responsibilities," he said.